Mobile phone gaming is giving stiff competition to gaming on other platforms, and to a large extent the credit goes to the newer breed of smartphones. With advanced processors, better graphic capabilities and controls that range from just touch to motion control, smartphones give a realistic feel to the games being played on them.

Here’s our list of the five best free games for Android smartphones:

Angry Birds:

The creator of Angry Birds, Rovio Mobile’s success is due to this game alone. The name of this game is itself enough to bring smiles to the faces of lakhs of people.

Who would have thought that the simple idea of launching a few screaming birds at some worthless pigs from a catapult will result in the creation of a legend.

But the truth is right before our eyes.

At present, Angry Birds is the most popular and the most downloaded game across smartphone platforms. Users can enjoy the latest installment of Angry Birds Rio on their smartphones once they are done playing the original version.

This game has a full version and an ad supported one as well.

Labyrinth

This game brings back memories of a small game built on our pencil boxes in school, that had four silver balls and a circular maze, in which the goal was to get all the four balls to the center of the circles.

Well, labyrinth is not different. The objective of this game is to take the silver ball through the tricky track and reach the goal, and the best thing is that this game uses the inbuilt Accelerometer of the smartphone to allow motion sensing direction control.

There are 10 different levels in the free version and users are allowed to make their custom levels as well, so hours of fun are guaranteed.

This game has been developed by Illusion Labs.

Robo Defense

Robo Defense is a real time strategy game in which you plan ways to ward off constantly growing attacks by the robot army that wants to take your castle.

Players have to deploy weapons to defend themselves from the army. The weapons can also be upgraded by using the money earned by killing or destroying robots.

The game starts at a very basic level of difficulty. As it progresses, the degree of difficulty increases, thereby increasing the number of robot attacks, and also sending more and more difficult opponents that require a higher level of skill or strategy to kill.

The free version only includes one level but a little tweak to the difficulty settings can give a different game-play experience altogether.

Cyberlord Archology

The game is set in the year 2173, when the powers of the governments are on the decline and the world is governed by mega corporations.

You have to lead the resistance forces and save the world from total surveillance!
Your role is to lead a four-man team on infiltration missions, hacking into camera systems and computer terminals, taking over security robots and luring enemies into ambushes with mines and sentry guns.

Mouse Trap

This is possibly one of the simplest puzzle games ever made but it has all the ingredients to keep players of all ages hooked to it.

The story idea behind the game is to move bricks and other obstacles from the mouse’s path and help it to exit. The levels are simpler in the beginning and as you progress through the game, the intensity and level of difficulty increase, with more complex puzzles and unmovable tiles in the way.

The mouse knows only one way and that is to go straight. So you have to wear your thinking cap and move the obstacles out of its way. If you run completely out of ideas then you have the option of restarting the level or get a hint that gives step by step guidance to finish the level.

But there is a limit beyond one help request per hour; so you will be forced to use your grey matter.

Nowadays smartphones are not just about communication, equipped with apps they can also help you cook! Here are some of the best cooking apps for Android devices:

Sweet ‘n’ spicy

This application has one of the largest collections of Indian recipes courtesy byfullmeals.com. It has a total of over 4,000 recipes spread across three major categories: vegetarian, non-vegetarian and non-dairy vegetarian. It also has a calorie calculator.

The best part is that you can comment on recipes, and your comments can be viewed by other users. This can be your own recipe or a tip or comment on the existing ones.

Each recipe has the list of ingredients required to make it, preparation instructions and user comments. You can search for recipes by name, and save your favourite recipes so that you don’t have to search for them again.

There is also a “My Kitchen” feature which helps you find recipes for the ingredients you have – you can put at the most three ingredients in a basket and then click on search to find the recipes that they can be used for. Recently used ingredients are also listed for ease of use

The application is available free of cost.

Mario Batali Cooks!

This is the official Android App of Mario Batali, a celebrity American chef of Italian descent. All the content in this application has been created by the chef himself. It features 63 most requested recipes from the many regions of Italy, each with its own video and still images made exclusively for the app.

You can browse recipes by region, course, prep-time, season, category of food, or kid-friendliness. The app has over five hours of video showing Mario cooking all 63 recipes, plus 25 more technique and kitchen-basics videos. There are still images also that accompany every step of each recipe.

The app’s bookmarking feature lets users cook more than one recipe at a time and jump quickly to favourites. There is also a built in timer for recipes.

The app gives food and wine pairing tips, along with Mario’s notes about them.

The best part is that the app gives you fully automated, multi-view, one-click shopping lists that you can check off at the grocery store. An extensive glossary of terms has been included in the app, just in case you don’t understand any words used in the recipe.

The app can be integrated with your Facebook account so that you can share your cooking stories via the web.

Mario Batalia’s app is priced at Rs 225, but then it’s better than buying a recipe book, which doesn’t have video and is never updated.

Allrecipes.com Dinner Spinner

The app contains over 40,000 user-submitted recipes from Allrecipes.com, including more than 500 Indian dishes. Each recipe features photos and reviews from the website’s community of millions of home cooks.

You will also find time-saving recipe tips from Allrecipes.com members and their ideas for recipe variations as well.

There are several categories to choose from, including appetizers, drinks, main dishes, side dishes, and desserts. You can also choose by ingredient, search for what you have on hand or what you are looking to buy.

If you are short of time you can also search recipes according to the time it takes to make them. You will get options for recipes that cook in under 20 minutes to all-day slow cooking dishes.

If you are not sure what you’re looking for, just shake the phone or hit “spin” to get a random selection of dishes and ingredients.

What’s more, you can share your favourite recipes with friends through Facebook, Twitter, or email.

If you are a good cook many people will be happy if you share your own recipes through this app.

The application is free.

KnowledgeBook: Cooking

This is a cooking app with absolutely no recipes. Instead, it contains all the little bits of information and rules of thumb that you need in the kitchen.

It has answers to questions like: what can be substituted for buttermilk or baking soda in a pinch; how many bananas does it take to make 1 cup of slices; how many cups make a pint; what temperature should an oven be set to if the recipe calls for a “moderately hot” oven, etc.

With sections like yields and equivalents, substitutions, general cooking terms, measurement conversions, and high-altitude considerations, the application aims to be a one-stop reference for all the extra information needed to help you understand your recipes and to get cooking!

The application is free and really comes in handy if you are just beginning to learn cooking, even though it is not a recipe app. It definitely makes it into the list of downloads, if you are looking for recipe apps.

Indian Recipes

It contains common Indian recipes and is good for people who don’t know much about cooking.

While the app does have some problems, such as the inability to save one’s favourite recipes, and the absence of a search option, it is on the whole simple to use and easy to understand.

It has an especially good collection of recipes for vegetarians. Go ahead and try this app as it is free and also because it is liked by most of its users, but keep in mind that it is a waste of time for lovers of non-vegetarian food.